This honeyeater is restricted to western New Guinea. It occurs in the mountains of the Vogelkop Peninsula and also in the Fakfak and Kumawa ranges of the Bomberai Peninsula.
Adults have a black to dark-brown head and neck, a buff-speckled nape, white forehead and eyebrow, a pale blue-green bare patch around the eye, a white stripe below the eye, and a pink to red wattle. The dark-brown back has buff scalloping.
It uses mountain forest and forest edges bordering grassland, generally at 800–1,800 m. In the Kumawa Mountains, birds forage alone or sometimes in pairs or trios, searching leaves and flowers from about 4 m above ground to the canopy.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.